In Wales, various sites are especially connected to the faeries, the tylwyth teg, as places where they dwell. These include ancient sites such as barrows and hillforts and spaces reached underground from river banks, caves, lakes or mountain sides. These associations with ancient sites are something I’ve also discussed in my Spirits of the Land, as well as in my specific examination of the Welsh Fairies.
One Welsh burial mound linked explicitly with the faeries is the barrow called Bryn yr Ellyllon (the Elves’ Hill) which was near Mold (the site is now under a front garden in a housing estate). Here, in 1827, a woman returning late at night from market saw a skeleton-like being sitting on top of the mound. It was dressed in gold “as bright as the sun” she said. Another report states that a headless warrior on a grey horse guarded the location. Six years after the vision of the skeleton, road builders uncovered a stunning Bronze Age gold cape from inside the round barrow. The name of the spot clearly suggests that local people had long had supernatural experiences there. Another barrow closely linked to the fair folk is the Giant’s Grave at Glascwm in Powys, which reportedly is watched over by them. Equally, the fair folk have been seen dancing there on a barrow at Banwan Bryddin near Neath.
Although there are no recorded legends that I’ve been able to locate, these cases put me in mind of a Neolithic site on Ynys Mon/ Anglesey. A chambered tomb near Llanfair is called Bryn yr Hen Bobl– the hill of the old (or ancient) people. Who exactly these ancient folk might have been believed to be by the earlier population can’t be determined for sure but- given the faery-link that is so frequently made with other tombs- I’m reasonably confident in suggesting that we’re taking about the tylwyth teg here. Former residents in the area may have sensed that the monument was constructed by much older human populations, but the British folklore tendency is not to ascribe mysterious structures to previous human inhabitants but to supernatural builders.
The Bryn from a distance
Fascinatingly, one euphemistic term used for the ‘little folk’ in Cornwall is ‘the Old People’- which would have been something like an hen pobel in Cornish originally. This alone argues for us more confidently understanding the Welsh name as a faery reference. We can go further though. Katherine Briggs records in her Dictionary of Fairies (1977, 317) that the name derives from the fact that the Cornish faeries were regarded as the souls of the ancient heathen dwellers on the peninsula. Walter Evans Wentz recorded evidence of the same belief, writing that “pixies were often supposed to be the souls of the prehistoric dwellers of this country” (Fairy Faith, 176). He encountered exactly the same notion in Wales. A Mr Ceredig Davies of Llanilar, near Aberystwyth, told him that “by many of the old people, the tylwyth teg were classed as spirits… Many of the Welsh looked upon the tylwyth teg or fairies as the spirits of the Druids, dead before the time of Christ who, being too good to be cast into Hell, were allowed to wander freely about on earth.” Equally, a John Jones of Pontrhydfendigaid told him that his grandfather and a companion had once heard singing in the air in a field where they were digging a ditch. Soon afterwards, ancient remains were found, and the pair “naturally decided, on account of the singing, that the bones and urns were of the tylwyth teg” (Fairy Faith, 147 & 148). It looks as though, in interpreting Hen Bobl, all roads lead to the same conclusion: whether we understand the phrase to mean the faeries, or the ancient druidic people who became faeries, the significance is the same- and this is a possibility that may be further enhanced by the knowledge that Ynys Mon was the last stronghold of the Druids against the Romans. What better place to commemorate their dead, therefore?
As I propose in Spirits of the Land, whatever the precise reasons for ancient monuments originally being treated as faery sites, the key aspect of the belief is that it creates a deep link between the landscape and the faery folk. In addition, it integrates with our history as well as with landforms, explaining the presence of mysterious mounds or standing stones and giving a powerful sense of continuity. Not only might the faeries be in-dwelling in wells, springs and hills, they inhabit the oldest built structures in the country as well, emphasising the extent to which they are embedded within our topography, mythology and culture. For the Welsh speaking population of Ynys Mon, it’s arguable therefore that the Hen Bobl stood for a very profound and longstanding connection with the island. Representing, as they do, an older wave of settlement of the British Isles than the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of Lloegr (England), we might suggest that when the Celtic people referred to an ‘ancient folk’ who were felt to be present at Bryn yr Hen Bobl, they were discussing an extremely ancient presence on the land indeed.
I’m delighted to announce the publication of a new book through Green Magic Publishing, Welsh Fairies- The Tylwyth Teg. This complements my original Green Magic book, British Fairies, as well as British Pixies and Manx Fairies.
The main purpose of the book is to highlight how the tylwyth teg differ in detail from the wider British faery family. I think their uniqueness lies in certain physical features- such as their strangely pale complexions- and certain cultural characteristics- their musicality and their close links to oak trees and to mines.
In the January 2022 issue of the Fairy Investigation Society newsletter (no. 15), Michael Swords wrote a very interesting article on ‘True’ Close Encounters with the Tylwyth Teg in Anglesey in the Early 1800s. In this, he considered some accounts of faery encounters that were reported in the journal Y Cymmrodor in 1886 (the cases are featured in my new book, naturally). Before examining the evidence from Ynys Mon/ Anglesey, Swords surveyed faery sightings in Wales as a whole (and mapped the results of this review of the published literature).
Analysing the map, which is reproduced newsletter, in the Swords noted that there were:
“[A] great collection of incidents darkening the southeastern area (Glamorgan and Gwent, spilling into Monmouthshire.) This is the location of Cardiff and the densest population area of Wales… This, in UFO research, would represent a typical population-related density of cases. Plenty of potential witnesses but, more importantly, some amounts of persons who want to ask witnesses questions about their experiences and then write them down.”
FIS newsletter 15, pages 22-23
Swords also noted that, in the northeast of the country, there is another relatively dense population area (near to big cities in England such as Liverpool and Manchester) but nowhere near the case reports seen in the south. He proposed that this was a reflection of the fact that the area was under-investigated. Cases existed in these locales, he felt sure, but very few interested parties went out into the villages and asked about or recorded them. Equally, mid-Wales- which is a mountainous area with low population- had very few reported cases. His intuition was that this area had been almost entirely un-investigated by folklorists. Likewise, were it not for the folklorist who recorded his researches in Y Cymmrodor, there would be very little from around Gwynedd or Ynys Mon (that is, the north-west of the country).
Swords then proceeded to select, from the reported cases for the whole country, those that he found most convincing. The first of these is the ‘Bodfari incident‘ which I have described in a previous posting. The author also ventured drawing what the witnesses reported. As he noted “All of the cases describe personages of a child-like size, and therefore in the three-to-four-foot-tall range. This places them squarely in the range of the common beings seen in the better cases elsewhere in the literature, whether old or modern.” His illustrations include several small ‘gnome’ or dwarf like figures, one dressed in green and another in red, looking like a small Santa Claus. There is also a curious doll-like female who was met repeatedly at Newborough on Ynys Mon, as she would visit a Mrs Roberts to borrow her griddle (gradel in the Welsh that both parties spoke) for baking her bread. The faery girl would thank Mrs Roberts for her loan by giving her a loaf . Here, Swords observed wisely- “I wondered about the ‘iron’ here and if that was an inconsistency which should invalidate the case. Then it occurred to me that I needed to get a little more humility as to whether I understand enough about the thinking processes of fairies to order them about as to what sort of rules they decide to lay down for we humans.” As longer term readers will appreciate, my effort on this blog is always to try to avoid ‘human’ interpretations of non-human activities and to endeavour (perhaps without the requisite humility!) to understand what the faeries are doing on their own terms and not ours.
Swords’ valuable overall summary of the Welsh sightings is as follows:
“The overall assessment of the better Welsh cases is that several incidents of the following stand out: fairies trooping along rural roads or natural areas, fairies playing music and circle-dancing, sometimes near brooks, fairies interacting with rural and farming people in classic brownie ‘tit-for tat’ fashion, and occasional interactions with a solitary [member of the] tylwyth teg. A few cases exhibit hostility, but they are not the norm.”
FIS no.15 page 25
Swords then gives an outline of the half dozen faery accounts that a Mr W. Cobb heard and recorded during a visit to Holyhead in 1885- and which he subsequently regarded as significant and credible enough to report in the journal Y Cymmrodor. The various short stories deal with very typical faery themes: gifts of money that are revoked upon disclosure; leaving out water, soap and towels for the faeries when they enter a house to bathe at night (three incidents); the tylwyth teg undertaking threshing in a barn; and, a visit to the faeries and riding with them. Swords sees the underlying thread to all of these as being “a slightly touchy but generally benign interaction between humans and fairies” in a tit for tat or give and take style. He asks, rhetorically, if this is typical of the tylwyth teg; I think we could say that it’s typical of the British faery as a whole: they are (by and large) the ‘Good Neighbours’ by which name we know them (the Welsh equivalent being Bendith y Mamau- the mothers’ blessings, with the same general sense), subject always to the proviso that offence can be taken and that major breakdowns in relations can, from time to time, take place.
In conclusion, Swords had this to say of Cobb’s cases. His main witness, a Mrs. Owen, firmly believed what she passed onto him partly because, although she hadn’t seen faeries herself, she had been the recipient of gifts of faery money. Much more importantly, though, she believed because she had been told by both her parents about their own faery encounters. These were, to quote Swords, “spectacular, [and] strange and wonderful [yet] told without frills or any great adventure or revelations, just matter-of-factly as if this sort of thing is common knowledge. No one is claiming any special status about themselves, nor boasting nor glory. Something happened. Then it went away. In UFO research, as in many anomalous incidents, this is the prime clue that we are dealing with something that the witness believes to be objectively true.” A point I’ve often made is that I think we ought to take faery reports seriously simply because they have been made consistently and regularly over centuries. They are, by and large, part of the fabric of everyday- usually rural- life, being- to some extent- no different from seeing a fox or a badger in terms of uniqueness, although plainly they carry with them a far greater mystique and magical charge.
Finally, Swords reviewed how we should assess the Ynys Mon accounts- or for that matter, the many other very similar ones from around Wales and around Britain as a whole. In doing so, I feel he sympathised with the position I’ve just set out:
“[Either] many of the people of Anglesey- and Wales in general- were sitting around amusing themselves by telling similar lies and fantasies, or those same people were telling rather short and nearly pointless stories of their mostly brief encounters with entities that they were certain were real elements in their surroundings.”
The article’s author was inclined to take the view that the many witnesses “were talking about realities and not made-up foolishness.” That has always been my approach on this blog, and in Welsh Faeries just as in my other books, I accept that the Welsh witnesses over the last few centuries knew exactly what they saw and felt. It was neither deception nor delusion, but a genuine experience of contact.
Some North Wales faeries (according to North Wales Live in June 2018)
Although, as I have described before, faeries are generally regarded as excellent at animal husbandry, their relationship with the livestock domesticated by humans is not always straightforward. They generally get on well with cattle, who seemed to like being milked by the fae folk, and they have a particularly good relationship with goats, but their interactions with dogs can often be hostile and perilous for the dogs. A few Scottish and other cases give us further insights into the interactions between the Good Folk and farm animals.
The faeries’ relationship with horses is notably complex. They have their own horses, but they still like to ride those kept by us, stealing the steeds from people’s stables at night. The animals are always returned, but they are often left exhausted and sweaty the following morning. On the Isle of Man in the eighteenth century, the folklore collector George Waldron met one man who had lost four of his steeds through overexertion by riders from the fairy hunt. Despite the harsh treatment of many horses, though, there are apparently some that enjoy the thrill of racing with the fairies. If they are left to graze loose in a field overnight, and the hunt passes nearby, some horses will escape to gallop with the hounds. All the same, it may be that this generally poor treatment explains the wariness- if not fear- displayed by horses when they detect a fae presence.
Example of horses’ edginess when faeries might be present come from around the British Isles. At Fairy Bridge, on the Isle of Skye, for example, it was impossible to ride or lead or drive a horse over the bridge at night. This was because they could see the faeries dancing there and would not pass. In West Yorkshire in England it was said that horses, when they reared for no apparent reason, did so because they could see a boggart. To the rider, it would look like a stone or some other harmless object, but the steed could see through the glamour and would shy away.
This evidence from Yorkshire suggests some extra sensitivity- or even the second sight– on the part of the livestock. That this is the case seems to be confirmed by a Manx example. There was a gate on a path in one parish on the island where a fairy was sometimes seen standing- he looked like a man in a long brown coat with bright buttons, but the figure was of more than human height. Horses disliked passing through the gate late at night, and cattle would always keep away from it. Each of the two cairns in a field further along the same path was believed to have a guardian buggane (a creature akin in many respects to the boggart).
Secondly, it once happened in Orry’s Dale, on the Isle of Man, that no bread delivery took place because the baker’s cart horse was able to see the fairies after dark and would take fright. On the particular occasion recorded, as it was getting near dusk the boy delivering the bread decided not to risk the horse rearing or bolting- and had gone home instead.
Finally, we have an example which indicates that, for all their skills in animal rearing and for all their benign interactions with some livestock, there is still a gulf between the faery and the human worlds- or, at least- a limit to the degree of interaction they will tolerate. At Greshornish on the Isle of Skye there was an area of especially lush pasture called the Aird. Its verdancy seems to have been the result of the fact that it was a faery pasture. Despite the richness of the sward, the local population never grazed their sheep there. If they ever dared to put out a flock to pasture, the sheep would run in circles, go mad and swiftly die. Humans cannot eat faery food for risk of being trapped in faery; apparently, human farm stock cannot eat faery food because it is fatally poisonous for them. Whether this is because the constitutions of the faery animals and those kept by humans are fundamentally incompatible, or because the faeries had ‘cursed’ their pasture at Greshornish so as to protect it, isn’t wholly clear. Given that facts that faery cows can graze terrestrial pastures and interbreed with human herds- and that the Scottish and Manx water bulls (the tarbh uisge and tarroo ushtey respectively) can do exactly the same- inclines me to believe that the deadly grass was a defence against trespassers rather than a sign of deeper physiological incompatibilities.
It’s pretty well established that faery kind can’t cross flowing water. This is fortunate, as it enables escape by those fleeing them after stealing their possessions, or by those running away from a being that wants to devour them. For example, individuals have got away by this simple strategy from a pursuing boggart, the monstrous nuckelavee on Orkney and a blood thirsty each uisge(water horse) at Trotternish on Skye. In this case some young women let an old female spend the night sheltering with them in their shieling. One awoke in the middle of the night to discover their old visitor sinking her teeth into the arm of another of the sleepers. The first girl leapt up and fled, but the old woman assumed her horse form and made chase. The galloping mare was catching up but- little way from Bracadale church- the girl jumped over a stream and, at the same time, the cocks crowed. The each uisge could not cross the stream and the fugitive was safe. It’s of course extremely puzzling that a water horse has difficulties with water; the explanation would appear to be that the natural habitat of the each uisge is either the sea or freshwater lakes. A flowing river is different, somehow, and because of this forms an impenetrable barrier. The same looks to be the case with the nuckelavee: they live in the sea and can come up on land to ravage the livestock, but are in trouble if they encounter fresh water- which includes rain, oddly enough. One wet days, they won;t come ashore at all…
Then again, a kelpie in human form wanted to cross the River Dee at Inchbare one stormy night. The boatman agreed to take him across- and charged no fee for this. As his passenger departed, a song was heard:
“The Dee shall be quiet and merciful ever While you and your sons have a boat on the river.”
Perhaps being in the boat was what made the difference for the kelpie, but more likely it was the fact that the kelpie’s native habitat is deep pools in rivers. All the same, why it couldn’t just swim in that case isn’t clear; perhaps it was just lazy, or tired (and why not?).
A bauchan
The Scottish bauchan or bogan (a type of bogie) can cross the sea. In one story from Lochaber a farmer had a love-hate relationship with the bauchan who lived in the vicinity. The pair often used to fight each other, but at the same time the bauchan would gather fuel for the farm in bitter weather and helped the family move house. When the farmer had to leave his land because of the Highland clearances, the bauchan travelled with him to the United States and (in the shape of a goat) helped clear the new land he settled. Perhaps, again, being insulated from the sea by the ship they sailed on was the key thing.
The same ability to cross oceans applies to the Scottish faery-lover, the leannan sith. Evans-Wentz (Fairy Faith 112) recounted how a man from Barra, called Lachlann, had a fairy lover who used to visit him nightly, to the point that he was becoming exhausted by her demands and was beginning to fear her affection. He decided to flee to Canada to escape her, but she quickly found out, and could be heard lamenting by women milking the cattle at evening on the meadows. Nonetheless, when Lachlann reached Nova Scotia, he found the fairy had followed him there. She might have sailed secretly with him, or possibly she might have just used her magical powers to transport herself there. Of course, if she could do that, you begin to wonder why some of the others didn’t. It appears that the inherent defensive properties of fresh flowing water are too formidable even for the faeries’ powers.
For more details of some of the ‘faery beasts’ described here, see my Beyond Faery.
Recently, researching another subject entirely (my book Waiting for Utopia) I read an article written in International Times in 1971. The author, called on ‘Joy,’ was discussing the legends of King Arthur, which are often called ‘the Matter of Britain.’ She described what this mythical Britain, what she termed the ‘Enchanted Island’ meant to her. Britain was:
“The island I love. Now, this love has nothing to do with what is generally called Patriotism. I do not stand and salute the flag. I do not care for the British Empire. And yet, there is this mysterious quality I cannot pin down into words- there is a magic that, regardless of any truth, reality or words, holds my heart and soul for Britain.”
She went on to discuss the Druids, White Horses, Avalon and Glastonbury- a place where “the presence of our remote ancestors can strongly be felt,” leaving you with a longing for “something you have never seen.”
I immediately understood what Joy had been describing- a feeling that couldn’t easily be put into words in English and part of what I have tried to invoke in my recent Spirits of the Land. At the same time, it set my mind wandering down various by-ways of British folklore and myth, straying from Arthur to wraiths by indirect routes.
The first thing that occurred to me was that the Welsh, though, do have a single word for part of what Joy was trying to describe. The Welsh word hiraeth may be translated as meaning “a deep yearning, grief or sadness for a place, or time, or persons, that no longer exist, and so can never be restored or visited.”
Cyhyraeth
Now, this word hiraeth may already seem to be familiar to some readers from faery lore. Also from Welsh comes the near homophone ‘cyhyraeth,’ the name for that country’s equivalent of the banshee. The name derives from the Welsh cyhyr meaning flesh or muscles and relates to the being’s corpse like appearance, but it also suggests for me the idea of creature who laments with and beside the bereaved. The cyhyraeth– a skeletal moaning spirit who makes a “doleful, dreadful noise in the night,” disturbing people’s sleep and sounding like the groans of the dying. Her cry presages a funeral or an epidemic or precedes bad weather on the coast. The unpleasant groaning is heard three times, each time getting nearer but at the same time quieter and less shrill. The cyhyraeth can be heard several months before the death it marks, or it can replicate the circumstances of the death, for example by following the future route of the funeral cortege, by coming to rest at the point where a grave will be dug or by moving along the shore line with lights showing before a shipwreck occurs. In some places the cyhyraeth seems to be a more physical spirit, passing through the streets and lanes of a neighbourhood and rattling on the windows and doors of every house in addition to its awful groans (see my Beyond Faery).
The Welsh cyhyraeth is related to the Highland faery woman or bean-sith called the caointeach– the (little) weeper or ‘keener’ (the English verb ‘to keen’ comes from the very same Gaelic root, ‘caoine’ meaning to cry or to weep). We might think of them both as ‘co-mourners,’ who share in a family’s grief. The Highland tradition was to have professional keeners at a wake and funeral; the caointeach was merely the faery equivalent of these human lamenters.
Some believe that the caointeach exclusively forebodes violent death, such as in fighting, whilst others say that she has much more of a role as a banshee for a clan than marking deaths in a wider community. She has been described as a typical faery woman- small and dressed in green, only as big as a child. The keener tends to emerge at night, meaning that she is seen far less than she is heard. Her voice has been described as a mournful wailing, bitter weeping, screams or, even, as sounding like splashing water. She haunts the vicinity of houses, circling them clockwise (see again my Beyond Faery).
Co-walkers
In the Highlands, we find another example of a faery parallel to human life. This is the co-walker or joint eater, a being that was described best by the Reverend Robert Kirk in his Secret Commonwealth. This is what he had to say:
“They are clearly seen by these Men of the Second Sight to eat at Funeralls [and] Banquets; hence many of the Scottish-Irish will not taste Meat at these Meittings, lst they have Communion with, or be poysoned by, them. So are they seen to carrie the Beer or Coffin with the Corps among the middle-earth Men to the Grave. Some Men of that exalted Sight (whither by Art or Nature) have told me they have seen at these Meittings a Doubleman, or the Shape of some Man in two places; that is, a superterranean and a subterranean Inhabitant, perfectly resembling one another in all Points, whom he notwithstanding could easily distinguish one from another, by some secret Tockens and Operations, and so go speak to the Man his Neighbour and Familiar, passing by the Apparition or Resemblance of him… They call this Reflex-man a Co-walker, every way like the Man, as a Twin-brother and Companion, haunting him as his shadow, as is oft seen and known among Men (resembling the Originall,) both before and after the Originall is dead, and wes also often seen of old to enter a Hous, by which the People knew that the Person of that Liknes wes to Visite them within a few days. This Copy, Echo, or living Picture, goes att last to his own Herd. It accompanied that Person so long and frequently for Ends best known to it selfe, whither to guard him from the secret Assaults of some of its own Folks, or only as ane sportfull Ape to counterfeit all his Actions… They avouch that a Heluo, or Great-eater, hath a voracious Elve to be his attender, called a Joint-eater or Just-halver, feeding on the Pith or Quintessence of what the Man eats; and that therefoir he continues Lean like a Hawke or Heron, notwith standing his devouring Appetite…”
Kirk, Secret Commonwealth, c.3
It’s clear that Kirk considered these co-walkers, doppelgangers and joint eaters to be faeries or elves, members of the sith folk, rather than ghosts or other spirits. He returned to the subject later in the book. Those with the second sight, “If they sie the Species of any Person who is sick to die, they sie them covered over with the shrowding Sheet.” They don’t solely predict imminent death though: he heard of an account of a woman seen with a spirit at her shoulder; this man turned out to be her future husband (although, tragically, he died soon after their marriage). He also recorded that “Seers [those with the second sight] avouch that severals who go to the Siths before the natural Period of their Lyfe expire, do frequently appear to them” (Kirk, A Succinct Accompt of Lord Tarbott’s Relations). Clearly, Kirk’s classification of the faery or sith people was a good deal wider than we might anticipate to day, given that he included within it these co-walkers, the spirits of the departed and- for that matter- what we’d term poltergeists.
An everyday street scene in Whitby, North Yorkshire (during the Goth weekend)
Wraiths
Very similar beings are known in England as well as Scotland, called variously fetches and swarths in Cumberland, waffs and wafts in Yorkshire, waughs in Durham and Northumberland and wraiths in the rest of the country. An article published in the Huddersfield Chronicle in August 1852 noted that these apparitions didn’t always take the form of the deceased person, but might also be seen as a strange dog, cat or hare. William Henderson, in his account of the Folklore of the Northern Counties (1866, pages 30-31) gives several examples of waffs and wraiths. He states that “presages of death are very common on the Border [with Scotland]”- phenomena that can include the sound of bells, chirping crickets and the howling of dogs, but “the most fatal is to see your own wraith walking to or away from you at noon or before sunset.” He continued: “the wraith is an apparition exactly like a living person and its appearance to that person, or others, is commonly thought an omen of death.” Henderson then gave several examples from the north-east of England. One, from Whitby, concerned a man awaiting surgery, who saw his own waff and realised (correctly) that he would not survive the operation. In the other cases, an individual saw another person’s waff, either just before they died or at the moment of their decease. No less a figure than John Wesley recounted the story of a waugh or spirit from Bishopswearmouth that returned to pester his grand-daughter until she secured her inheritance. Henderson also provided the text for the Folklore Society’s book on northern folklore and he recounted there another story set in Whitby, on this occasion concerning a man from Guisborough who saw his own waff whilst visiting a shop in the little port. This man acted firmly towards the apparition, asking “What’s thou doin’ here? Thou’s after no good, I’ll go bail. Get thy ways yom [home] with thee!” Apparently the waff slunk off, duly chastened- and the man didn’t die soon afterwards (Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties& The Borders, 1879, 46). Here, Game of Thrones fans will recall Syrio Forel’s advice to Arya Stark: “What do we say to the god of death? Not today!”
In the rest of England, wraiths are typically encountered on special nights of the year (very often on St Mark’s Eve- April 24th) when a person keeping vigil in the porch of the parish church will see the forms of those due to die during the next year entering the church. This belief is reported from Dorstone in Herefordshire (on Halloween), at Walton le Dale in Lancashire (on Christmas Eve), at Child’s Ercall in Shropshire (on New Year’s Eve) and at Crowcombe in Somerset (on Midsummer Eve). A common danger was to recognise your own wraith amidst the congregation of the doomed, as at Derwent Woodlands in Derbyshire, where the custom was for the vicar to preach a ‘Sermon of the Dead’ to an empty church on the last Sunday in December. The new vicar in the parish rejected the idea of continuing such a superstitious tradition, but when the day came he felt compelled to go and- sure enough- saw himself sitting amongst the spirits in the pews. John Aubrey also reported a case where the gift of seeing wraiths ran in a family. The three daughters of the Earl of Holland (of Holland Park in west London), all met themselves shortly before their premature deaths (Miscellanies, 1696).
Returning to the Reverend Kirk, his conception was evidently of a kind of partnership with the fae. The co-walkers, rather like the caointeach, perform functions parallel to activities in the mortal world. They share human grief, and are so well-attuned to individual human’s lives that they can foresee and foreshadow their deaths. It’s a fascinating and different angle on our usual perspectives on faery life.
British Fairies 